Ballard
by bluewpc
Summary: A short tale of Regeneration Through Violence


He was sat cross-legged upon that gnarled limb massive beyond his reckoning and he was shielded by those extraneous vines that were coiled around the trunk and the branches like some great assemblage of snakes and so tight were they that it was not unlike a wire garroting the life of that ancient tree. In the crook of his knees were his elbows rested and on an adjacent branch the barrel of his rifle sat unmoving. His cheek was pressed against the mahogany stock and his eyes they were one closed and the other peering into the scope wherein was magnified a vast clearing in the jungle filled with grass as tall as he and hued brightly in the warm glow of that near star. The circinate ferns that were also there were rustling gently and he was not sure if it was by wind or the small vermin that were everywhere in that hylean land which did tremble it so. He focused on the oscillating ferns and then the wind, a gentle thing that, passed over him and he sighed and glassed the clearing once more.

Till just before eventide did he remain in that cloistered place and not before then did his immobile form like a strange apparition obscured in those leavy shadows constantly shifting upon him move and then only slightly. An inch did he displace himself and in that moment of movement he saw in the clearing below a flash of imperial and he resighted in such a manner that it seemed he'd been performing such a maneuver all his life. There amongst the dense foliage a single wandering creature, a hexapede. He reckoned it was shy of four hundred yards and felt for wind but there was none. He adjusted the elevation and reset the windage and as he was about to fire the beast collapsed to the ground a spear jutting from its side.

This peculiar fact bothered him not at all. He waited and soon there appeared from the edge of the clearing a pair of the aboriginals inhumanely tall and blue and the stripes that ran cross their bodies gave him the notion that here walked tigrene quadrupeds set erect and the tails that swayed behind them reinforced this. They were a man and woman armed with bows and dressed in the loin cloths of that country and they went and knelt before the moaning creature and through the sights he could see their lips move and the cross hairs hovering ominously over those parting mouths. He fired and in the second it traversed that open toxic air he resighted again. The bullet struck true and the male who'd been speaking stopped suddenly and felt the red droplets upon his gaunt face and looked to his woman who was dead on the ground a hole in her forehead and he stared at this neoteric corpse in great perpension as if what had just occurred had somehow deviated from the natural order of things. When he looked away from the body the bullet was already set loose and it struck him in the throat and he was for some time drowning in his blood.

He descended from the tree by means of the vines and when he set foot on terra firma again it was near night and the jungle was brightened by a nocturnal dawn that was everywhere around him in all the colors his eyes might be of want to see. He came to the bodies and with a paring knife scalped the man and then the woman and then he set about gutting the animal. This too he accomplished with the parer and when he finished his hands were slick with blood and he slung the rifle across his chest and heaved the carcass onto his shoulders and returned to his home.

A secluded place high on a rock cliff accessible via a narrow path that zigzagged through that obdurate formation like a blackened vein that was near always in shadow he followed to a sheer wall that was its conclusion. This he scaled and once so he was home. There was a fire pit encircled by stone and before this he laid the kill and on a rack made of dried reed and shaved branch he tied the scalps where were tied many others. He'd an axe amongst his possessions and it was embedded in a sectioned log that was too large for his needs and he went and pried it loose and set to hacking the log to into pieces of a useable size and with these he kindled his fire and made a meal of the beast. He ate slowly alternating between breathing and eating. When he was finished he took up a rucksack where was stored a collection of books and from those he selected a large tome wherein was a marker and to the page it marked he flipped. He set himself upon a stone slab where was laid a bedroll as such as those that were issued to the men and placed the rucksack in a way that he might lean against it. He removed his shirt and removed his tanned leather boots and his woolen socks and placed them at the foot of his bed and reclined and in this way began to read in the dancing firelight.

When he woke there was above him a scarred face exhaling heavily upon him such that the goggles of his mask fogged. He waved blearily to that blue form and it retracted from him. A deep breath he took and removed the mask and wiped the eye cups and replaced the mask again. He stored the book away.

You can't just ever say hi can you.

The blue giant stepped back and then turned and eyed the rack and the bloody scalps and the blood that had pooled beneath them.

I didn't think so.

He yawned and rose from his bed and stretched and then twisted round grabbing his rucksack and placed it on his knees. From there he fished a spare filter and with it replaced the one in his mask. This silted one he washed in a bucket meant to catch rain water and then pocketed. By then the native had alighted the fire pit once more and was cooking a leg of his kill and he was staring deep at the broiling flesh as if within the bubbling muscle blackening as the moments passed he could divine some future that was not his own but if he saw anything he spoke neither spoke of it nor made sign of it. When the leg was done the native removed it and with a machete crafted by the hands of men he stripped flesh from bone and portioned it out between them.

They ate in silence and when they finished he took the leg bone and chucked it over the side of the cliff and licked his fingers. Then they sat and watched the day aggregate in its peaceful way.

After a while he motioned towards the scalp rack.

Say we get three more then we can call in.

Without looking at neither him the rack the Na'vi spoke. How many do we have now.

Forty-seven. I want an even number though.

Alright.

You know any place we could start.

I know a few.

Alright.

After a while he said, you ready.

When you are.

They descended for their abode the native by the cliff and he through the path. They met at the base of the wall and from there forded filicales that blanketed the land. They'd not gone long before they came across one of those six-legged horses and this steed was hitched to a tree and feeding from a patch of pitcher plants that were raised from that blessed earth. A harness lay upon the horse's back of a fine leather make and it glossed in the sunlight and when the native mounted it was as such that had been done in millennia past. He unhitched the horse from the tree and was helped onto the horse's back and the native pulled at the reins for he'd no queue to lead the creature and they set off for another land.

They were all day riding through the jungle startling the fauna and sending winged creatures whose definition was defied flushing through the air like squawking tracers of emerald and ruby. They stopped occasionally to rest the horse and water it at the many streams they crossed and by the day's meridian they'd covered near a hundred miles. They went on farther still trekking across valleys and hills clotted with trees that towered over them and where hidden in those leafed branches sang the moon's birds and every moment a different sound and he reckoned this some beautiful liturgy offered to whatever deity presided over these celestial lands.

They rode until on the precipice of a grassy plain that stretched for as many miles as the eye could see and probably more they stood. Here he dismounted and the native from a holster in the harness retrieved a long rifle and slipped from the horse's back. He led the horse to a tree akin in dimension to a conifer though no pines adorned its branches and neither were there needles but broad leaves whose accumulated weight weighed down those branches and it was here that he tied the horse. They set then through the plain and flattened the grass all their way and there was a soon a scent of salt in the air and not long after that they came to a coastal line where was a drop he surmised to be almost a two hundred yards into the frothing water below. On those bluffs were gripped the Ikran in all their spending glory but he saw no riders nor would there have been a point to shoot them as they'd fall into the sea.

He gazed out at the surface of blue gleaming wildly and there was the backdrop of Polyphemous and the shadow of a moon whose name he did not trailing it across it like some a portent of things to come and he said, Tis a beautiful land.

The native nodded his head and they continued on sweating across that maiden surface that was like virgin land unspoiled and here he thought was never heard the blow of an axe. All in its place. There were few trees in the plain though none reached the forestal heights of their brethren and even he thought them small but they were all leaned eastward where they were headed and they seemed of a strange bearing as if they were lending them their opinion on which route they might follow and he wondered if perhaps they'd a notion of what they were there to do. He supposed it mattered not and soon he'd forgot those floral advisors and was enjoying a herd of those rumbling beasts the aboriginals called Talioang.

It was afternoon when they spotted the hunting party a shade under two hundred yards away who'd he no doubt was tracking the herd. They went prone on the grass and forded before them those long beryl blades. They watched them a while, he through his scope glassing the plain to see if there might be around more of their fellows but he saw no one else. Yet he watched for a few minutes more and when they were up they leveled their rifles at the natives and shot them all. Then they crossed the distance between them and found there to be five dead lying beside each other and a sixth dying holding a hand to a gaping wound in its chest. This woman's scalp he took as she lay writhing as he'd not want waste a bullet and then he took the rest of the scalps and he tied those to his belt and she was still alive when they left for the horse.

He was in good spirits when they rode back and when they arrived he set those wet flaps of hairy skin to the rack and with a radio called for a pickup. Then he waited till nightfall and when it fell he sat upon his cliff with the native and appreciated the shimmering life and he said to the native, here a hallowed land, we're blessed to have it.


End file.
